6.2 Retail Locations
Moscow's western-style retail facilities are concentrating along twelve main axes and corridors respectively. Within the Garden Ring which defines the city center there are three noteworthy retail locations.
- Moscow's primary downtown retail location is Tverskaya which runs from the Kremlin to the northeast.
- Of lesser importance is Novy Arbat to the west of the Kremlin.
- Least important is Pyatnitskaya south of the Moskva.
Picture 8: The famous GUM department store (Upper Trade Rows) at Red Square (photographed in January, 2006)
As measured by standards of other major European cities Moscow's stock of retail space in modern shopping centers is still small. In Warsaw, for example, space available per capita was six times higher in early 2007. In the course of the Sunflower-Project which is supported by the city government 24 new centers belonging to three categories are constructed:
- Neighborhood centers (Proximity; up to 10,000 sqm of net retail space)
- Transport-oriented centers (Traffic; up to 20,000 sqm)
- Centers of regional and supraregional importance (World; > 25,000 sqm)
Existing centers and large-format stores cover the entire range of location types.
6.3 Logistics Locations
Moskow's logistics sector is still characterized by a large number of substandard facilities situated in secondary locations. Logistics properties are conspicuously clustered in the comparatively highly industrialized norther sections of the metropolitan area. This is due to the spatial position of major economic centers like Saint Petersburg, Russia's second biggest city, Novgorod, Smolensk, and the Baltic countries.